Have you found your thin place?
For the sake of your own spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being, I sure hope so. If you don’t know what a thin place is, maybe some elaboration will help:
“It’s not clear who first uttered the term ‘thin places,’ but they almost certainly spoke with an Irish brogue. The ancient pagan Celts, and later, Christians, used the term to describe mesmerizing places like the wind-swept isle of Iona (now part of Scotland) or the rocky peaks of Croagh Patrick. Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places, that distance is even shorter.”
Eric Weiner for the New York Times
Saved by Shiloh (again and again).
Thankfully, I found my favorite thin place decades ago—a peaceful, sacred expanse of Tennessee terra firma called Shiloh National Military Park. I’ve discovered other thin places on my travels through life, but none more powerful (i.e., paper-thin) than Shiloh.
Every time I visit I leave it all on the battlefield. Whatever I happen to be carrying in my heart at the time. The usual stuff we all carry from time to time—fear, anxiety, confusion, resentment, guilt, regret, anger. I don’t know about you, but for me, all that stuff seems to have accumulated as the years have piled up behind me.
After cycling the 9-mile outer loop around the battlefield, I always feel healed and renewed. Almost victorious. As if the roaming spirits reached through the thin veil and gave me fresh ammo to fight the fight of life another day.
The real battle’s perspective is never lost on me: 23,746 souls killed, wounded, or missing during the 48 hours of horror and carnage the blue and the gray inflicted on one another over the course of the two-day battle during April 1862.
I think God made Shiloh a thin place because of what happened there. As if He/She/It touched a holy finger to that 5,000 acres of nationally protected land and enacted a universal, non-negotiable edict for all earth-bound mortals to obey (yelling really loud in a thunderous God-like voice): “Nothing bad can ever happen here again. Understand? ENOUGH ALREADY!”
We must’ve listened and obeyed. Today, bluebirds fly out of the cannon barrels instead of blazing-hot molten balls of death.
You’ll know it when you brush up against it.
You can almost feel an otherwordly presence when you’re transfixed and lost in a thin place.
Maybe your thin place is a place of worship, where you sit in the same pew at the same time basking in the same shaft of cathedral light—the one that causes your body and soul to vibrate with joy.
Maybe it’s a favorite panoramic view that sucks all the ego out of you and leaves you drooling all over your fanny pack.
Maybe it’s a nature preserve thick with spell-binding fractal shapes that calm your central nervous system and make you forget the co-worker who dissed you with that passive-aggressive reply-all email.
I even believe states of mind like the act of creativity — flow states — can compress the layer between heaven and earth. They have for me over and over again, where my feeble thinking mind is suddenly switched off and some other source of ethereal wisdom supplies me with unexpected enlightenment that has at times left me slack-jawed and sobbing.
I’d even go so far as to say that even a person or object can qualify as a thin place. An old friend of mine is so filled with faith and light that he exudes heaven itself. Although, after lifelong struggles to resist the waiter’s offer of chocolate lava cake, he might laugh if I ever referred to him as a thin place.
Go for it.
After you find your thin place, place yourself in the midst of it every chance you get. It’s not a luxury or some guilty pleasure. It’s a necessity. A kind of life-changing health and wellness benefit HR could never dream up.
And if you ever want a personalized reconnaissance tour of my favorite thin place, saddle up and stuff a power bar in your britches (blue ones or gray ones—I stopped taking sides long ago). I’d be happy to have you along for the ride. 🚴
By the way, I get it: you probably have a few zillion social media notifications staring you in the face right now, the attention economy poised to flood your brain with dopamine. But if you stopped and scanned this post or any of my others, please know that Nomadkins is grateful for your time and for sharing my musings with your besties.
